Although I still enjoy them all, and play through them entirely at least once a year, Streets of Rage 2 rises to the top as my favorite in the series. As I am forming this article in my mind, I just want to go back and play them, even at the expense of progress in Bloodborne!
Right from the first Streets of Rage title from SEGA, this trilogy has been consistently brimming with innovation. Attention to detail and quality floods every area of the brawler. It's evident that a lot of inspiration and love went into making this one of the best brawlers in the history of video games, in and outside of the arcade.
When I first played Street Fighter II, I wished someone would put these characters in a side scrolling fighting game so I could let all of these moves rip enemies apart. A system this complex, with this many options (combos, retaliation, grabs), would easily let me decimate my enemy should I master it. Streets of Rage 2 brings the nuance of a fighting game into the brawler genre. Hints of this were in the original Streets of Rage, but the concept has been greatly elaborated upon for its sequels.
From the first Streets of Rage, you could hold up and press jump at the right moment to recover from a throw. This was something only popularized (and perhaps originated) in Street Fighter Alpha, four years later. If you were grabbed by an enemy, you could throw them over your shoulder by double-pumping the attack button, first to kick, and second to shift your center of gravity in order to propel them over your shoulder. This was more intuitive and empowering than wriggling the joystick back and forth while taking a beating like in most other brawlers, you could finally break free and turn the tables on what felt like a cheap move by your enemy.
Streets of Rage 2 lets you vault over enemies when you've grabbed them, switching sides so you can slam them to the ground with a press of the attack button, or get back in front of them to deliver body blows. There's a forward blitz move that lets you close in on an oppressor while attacking at the same time, and a back attack to hit someone directly behind you. The three characters each have multiple special attacks to master, such as headbutts, roundhouse kicks, a dragon punch of sorts, and even a fireball.
Pushing the hardware to the limits, there are tons of special effects. Reflections adorn the rippling water under the bridge, line scrolling fog fills an alien-themed funhouse, rotating backgrounds rock back and forth on the pirate ship. Tons of giant unique sprites join two players on-screen all at the same time. There's multiple scrolling layers everywhere, a lot of variation in the backgrounds and enemy types, and excellent use of the limited color palette. This would fit in well in the arcades, even compared with the much more powerful dedicated hardware in coin-ops at the time.
A fair amount of games would feature uninspired arrangements that sounded terrible on the 16-bit console's Yamaha FM chip, producing tinny mechanical warbles and chirps instead of music. FM synthesizers require a lot of care in sound design, you can't just sample instruments to generate the notes in your song. You painstakingly have to tweak an electronically generated frequency to arrive at an organic sounding tone.
SEGA contracted Yuzo Koshiro (whose sister helped design the character art on this, Ys, and ActRaiser) to work his magic on the entire Streets of Rage series. Using a PC88 as his development system, he designed his own music programming language called 'Music Love' to craft dance and techno style tunes. The incredible soundtrack makes the absolute most of the hardware. It's easy to find yourself drawn into the music and wanting to listen to it outside the game.
Streets of Rage 2 is a technical showpiece on the SEGA Genesis, and still stands as one of the best beat-em-ups of all time. If you don't own a Genesis with the original cartridge, you can play this game right now on the Virtual Console, XBLA, and PSN, but I recommend waiting for the 3DS release this July. After M2's amazing job on every 3D Classic thus far, I'm sure they will provide a faithful translation with a bevy of options to get the most out of the game, enhancing it to create a definitive version.
Check out the growing library of Throwback Thursdays articles here!
